At 5/16/01 12:16 AM, William X. Walsh wrote:
>New.net added Prodigy to their latest list of big ISP partners who are
>making new.net names resolvable in their dns.
>
>This is a big coup, and effects more ISPs than just prodigy, since
>Prodigy is also wholesaling to other ISPs.
>
>[snip]
>
>(BTW, the current new.net visibility number is over 40,000,000.
>Congrats to Mr Hernand and Patrick Greenwell and all the others at
>New.net)
<sarcasm>
Sorry for drawing out this thread, but I didn't realize this had become a
"kiss the competition's ass" list. Why am I always the last to know?
Well, here goes: Yes, big congratulations to new.net for attempting to
steal the domain space with no public input or oversight, and for
destabilizing the DNS system and reducing consumer trust in the
reliability of domains! Why, their domains now work -- if you believe
their somewhat elaborate accounting numbers, which involve things like
multiplying by 2.1 for every new ISP account they sign up so they can add
a 10 million account ISP and increase their displayed resolvability
number by 21 million -- for almost 10% of the Internet! Gasp! Their
wonderful product now has only a 90% failure rate!
Oh, and it's even better in the US, of course. In fact, Hernand's future
prediction, expressed on this very list two days ago, is that they're
improving it so that in five months' time, they'll only fail for 57% of
US consumers! What an accomplishment.
</sarcasm>
In most other industries, someone selling something that works 10% of the
time, with stated hopes to improve it to work 43% of the time in the US,
would be the subject of a class-action lawsuit for selling defective
goods. Maybe new.net's domains should have a legal disclaimer like the
Psychic Hotline, saying they're "for entertainment purposes only".
I originally composed a long reply to Hernand's disingenuous,
self-serving and insulting-to-the-community spin piece posted here, but
decided to let it drop as I had no wish to draw any more attention to
what will inevitably and deservedly be a failed venture. But since others
are continuing it, I do have to ask why anyone else would encourage this.
For all you people who complain that ICANN doesn't offer enough public
input, why on EARTH would you support new.net's attempt to take over part
of the domain space without any public input whatsoever?
Anyway, if new.net is trying to (1) be a contributing member of the
community, (2) be honest with consumers, and (3) prove they believe in
their product, I have some challenges for them:
1. Justify why you should have rights to exclusively profit from the
English word "kids", for example, instead of anyone else, when you know
there has been no community consensus about how a .kids TLD should be
administered or by who;
2. Put your resolvability number on your site as a percentage, rather
than an absolute number. Let's see how many people sign up when consumers
actually have a fair idea of how often they work and how often they don't;
3. Since you're asking consumers to rely on your domain names, I'm sure
you'll be doing the same. You can switch your primary company name to
"www.new.shop" and discontinue www.new.net. Heck, if people can't resolve
it, they can just type "www.new.shop.new.net", right? Catchy. Or are you
going to be sticking to plain old www.new.net because you need a real
domain name -- you know, one that works properly?
>A couple more big wholesalers would give them the momentum that would
>make it hard for other ISPs to justify not loading the configs.
I doubt it. What would actually cause most ISPs to switch without new.net
payola would be new.net end-users demanding that their domains resolve.
We'll have to see if new.net can sucker enough naive consumers to make
that happen.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
